Introduction

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Background

Investigating the affects of Team Wealth on Performance

  • Salary caps are used to limit how much teams can pay their players.
  • They were first introduced in the NBA in the 1984-85 season.
  • Many sports have followed.
  • Soccer is the world’s most popular sport.
  • It is well known that professional soccer players receive outrageous salaries especially in the European leagues.
  • NBA has increased the salary cap limit since it’s introduction
  • We believe that successful teams tend to dominate leagues largely due to their finances.

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Data Analysis

Approah

Hence, through statistical analysis, we are investigating the affects of money on team performances in the NBA and European Soccer.

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Data collection and wrangling

Data Collection and Wrangling

  • Data was collected from a variety of sources.
  • Data about wealth of football teams was collected from Forbes which has assessed the wealth of European football teams since 2007.
  • Data about wealth had to be combined over different years and certain metrics needed to be cleaned (numbers containing punctuation signs).
  • Football data was in the form of matches.
  • We wrote a script that would calculate the standings of each season so that we could see where the teams placed each year.
  • We have data on all European leagues but decided to focus on the three major ones.

Overview

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Overview

Investigating any connections between club value and performance

  • Limiting our data to Europe.
  • Exploring the three best leagues in England, Italy and Spain.
  • Comparing their financial data vs performance.

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Valuation of some Top European Teams

La Liga (Spain)

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Intro

La Liga is the highest soccer league in Spain, consisting of the top 20 teams each season.

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Wealthiest La Liga teams

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Wins per team

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Performance of the wealthiest teams

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FC Barcelona

Static Graph

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Real Madrid

Static Graph

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Atletico Madrid

Static Graph

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Discussion

  • 2 outlying wealthiest clubs; Barcelona and Real Madrid
  • Correspondingly these two clubs have the greatest number of total wins by a significant margin
  • This was confirmed with a box plot showing that the variance of placings is very low and the range of placings for Barcelona and Real Madrid over a long period of time is small. This highlights the stronghold that these two teams have on placings, while the rest of the less wealthy teams are left to fight for lower standings.
  • Atletico Madrid, the third wealthiest club in the Spanish league shows a significant increase in versatility in placings with respect to Barcelona and Real Madrid
  • This signifies that other teams most likely have to go through ‘rebuilding’ phases as their team ages, leading to them placing far lower on occasion whereas Barcelona and Real Madrid can buy players in their prime and therefore have far less ‘peaks’ and ‘troughs’ in season placement. There could be many other reasonable explanations for this trend.
  • This is further demonstrated in the line graphs

Seria A (Italy)

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Intro

Seria A is considered one of top soccer leagues in Europe and represents the best teams in Italy.

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Wealthiest Seria A teams

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Wins per team Seria A

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Performance of wealthiest teams

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Juventus

Static Graph

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AC Milan

Static Graph

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Inter Milan

Static Graph

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Discussion

  • Similar to the Spanish League, the Italian league has 3 major clubs of significantly higher wealth; A. C. Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus.
  • The box plots of these three major clubs show similar results to the Spanish league with high average placements, low versatility and low range.
  • The line graphs show that the placements are not as dominated in the Italian league as much as they are in the Spanish league

EPL (England)

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Intro

The English Premier League is the top level soccer league in England and works similarly to La Liga (top 20 teams stay, remaining are relegated).

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Wealthiest EPL teams

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Wins per team

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Performance of wealthiest

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Arsenal

Static Graph

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Manchester United

Static Graph

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Liverpool

Static Graph

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Chelsea

Static Graph

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Discussion

  • The English Premier has a larger group of the ‘wealthiest’ teams as compared to the previous leagues analysed
  • The box plots show a larger variation in placements; however, the wealthiest teams still tend to finish towards the top of the table.
  • The line plots highlight this increase in variation compared to the Spanish and Italian Soccer leagues.

NBA

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Overview

Conducting a similar investigation for Basketball

  • Considering the NBA as it’s widely considered to be the best.
  • Exploring a spread of 10 teams
  • Comparing their performance before and after the introduction of the salary cap
  • Due to the limitation of the data availbe, Win/Loss% is used instead of placing

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Overall wins per team

Wins before cap

Wins after cap

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LA Lakers

Static Graph

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Philadelphia Sixers

Static Graph

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Brooklyn Nets

Static Graph

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New York Knicks

Static Graph

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Golden State Warriors

Static Graph

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Chicago Bulls

Static Graph

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Houston Rockets

Static Graph

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LA Clippers

Static Graph

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Boston Celtics

Static Graph

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Dallas Mavericks

Static Graph

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Discussion

  • The NBA team with the most of number of wins were the Celtics, Lakers and the Bulls
  • There is some evidence to suggest that there is a larger spread in total wins per team after the salary cap was introduced however is not conclusive
  • The NBA Salary cap has increased significantly over time however this has not led to a club dominating the league.

Conclusion

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Conclusion

Conclusion

  • Correlation between club wealth and performance for Soccer
  • Influence of salary caps on NBA teams.
  • Accuracy of our hypothesis.
  • Limitations of our findings.
  • Extension of our analysis.

References

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References

References

Anon., 2017. opisthokonta. [Online]
Available at: https://opisthokonta.net/?page_id=995&fbclid=IwAR06yFQ-zr3aabVX0dC5L-ADBYcOA_MGfYcU9RBpNzVtwaltI_N-x6e1g4Y
[Accessed 22 May 2019].

Anon., 2019. [Online]
Available at: https://www.basketball-reference.com/?fbclid=IwAR0tiUPxwvdoXeOMbEdSd7JX9skw0BaMpsHiuPixrQQ2t0kNydu_jMP4MvM
[Accessed 15 May 2019].

Anon., 2019. datahub. [Online]
Available at: https://datahub.io/collections/football?fbclid=IwAR3r5dyW1JNvHG-f81TWI-4zfpCvZQ0k928ukeiN8Edw33p3FoJYPkLKUlY
[Accessed 2019 May 2019].

Anon., 2019. Forbes. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/soccer-valuations/list/?fbclid=IwAR2I1fKTwvQvH_USx_Q55Mqf8DvfR8daAT4wqpeIvxQpWnia59RBXMsZ_aM#tab:overall
[Accessed 25 May 2019].

Anon., 2019. NBA Salary Cap History. [Online]
Available at: https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/salary-cap-history.html
[Accessed 20 May 2019].

Celik O.B., I.-Y. M., 2017. Salary differences under the salary cap in major league soccer. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, pp. 623-624.

Depken, C., 2000. Wage disparity and team productivity: evidence from major league basketball. Economics Letters, pp. 87-92.

Staudohar, P., 1998. Salary Caps in proffessional team sports. Compensation and working conditions, pp. 3-11.